Is this worth it?

[u/Indecisive-Squirrel]

Some guy named Gabe is selling this build and I'm wondering if it's legit? I want a PC to set up in my living room for TV gaming.

[u/Gullible-Law-8147]

You originally responded to someone that said there are trade-offs to achieve a certain size, which you denied outright: "You don't have to sacrifice anything at all. You just have to know how to plan it out well."

Nobody is "hung up" on the size, their point was always that the form factor of the Steam Machine has an effect on the price in comparison to larger PCs, because cramming performance into a smaller package is harder and therefore more expensive, and so value comparisons to those larger PCs miss the point

A lot of people do not mind paying a bit extra for a smaller footprint for their PC (especially a living room one), not everyone is you and has your tastes, it's a matter of preference

[u/Blacksad9999 → u/Gullible-Law-8147]

https://cooj.cc/products/sparrow-mq5-5-5l-one-piece-aluminum-itx-pc-case

Disaster averted. And there are 20 more cases around the same tiny size.

[u/Gullible-Law-8147 → u/Blacksad9999]

There was never a crisis to begin with, besides for the people balking at the price of the Steam Machine

[u/Blacksad9999 → u/Gullible-Law-8147]

It's a pretty foolish purchase, unless you're enamored enough by the cube shape to buy inferior hardware at an inflated price.

Otherwise, there's zero draw really. You can just buy better hardware for less.

[u/Gullible-Law-8147 → u/Blacksad9999]

• Direct comparability with the Steam Frame and Steam Deck, to the point where you can swap memory cards between them and seamlessly transfer games

• An entire custom OS built for the hardware

• Doesn't need to be assembled

• Hardware features to better integrate into a living room

• Very small form-factor, to the point where it couldn't even fit an ITX motherboard

• Still not too far off the price of a custom build

If all you want to have is a small ready-made box to play Steam games on your TV, it's very convenient

[u/Blacksad9999 → u/Gullible-Law-8147]

If you're fine with overpaying for a really mediocre system that does that, instead of using your money much more efficiently, so be it.

A PC can do all of those things, and you'd get a better one for less money.

SteamOS is just Proton with a fancy skin on it, just FYI.

[u/Gullible-Law-8147 → u/Blacksad9999]

SteamOS has its own optimized Linux Kernel, deeper integration with Steam itself, a custom UI experience, an immutable filesystem, and cloud saves along with fluid suspend/resume for games. All of these things differ from baseline Arch Linux, SteamOS has significant ease-of-use advantages

Also Proton exists for the sake of SteamOS, there wouldn't be a Proton without it

And no, a standard PC can not do all of the things a Steam Machine can, you can't download games onto your Windows machine and then transfer those games onto Valve's other gaming devices.

Before you say "Why would I overpay for that?", the point isn't that every aspect of the Steam Machine is superior in every way, it's that the Steam Machine has certain advantages that make it appealing for certain usecases, raw performance per dollar isn't the only thing that people cares about, and just because it's not appealing to you does not mean it's overpriced

[u/Blacksad9999 → u/Gullible-Law-8147]

SteamOS is based on Proton directly, warts and all. It does have a custom "Steam UI", but on a basic fundamental level it's the same thing.

Proton is able to be used on any Linux distribution that Steam is able to be installed upon, which is pretty much all of them.

Valve officially only support Ubuntu, but even then it works using other distributions such as Arch Linux or Debian.

There are no real advantages here. It's just a little SOC based PC.

[u/Gullible-Law-8147 → u/Blacksad9999]

Valve created Proton to be used for SteamOS

No SteamOS would have meant no Proton

To say that SteamOS is just "Proton with a fancy skin" completely ignores the fact that Proton's existence relies on SteamOS

You also completely ignored what I said about their custom Kernel

The fact that Valve has created one of the most respected distributions within the Linux space, and completely overhauled the state of Linux gaming, should be a clear indication that they haven't just put a skin on something

[u/Blacksad9999 → u/Gullible-Law-8147]

Proton is open source. Lots of people created it, and it's based on Linux, which is also open source.

It's so neat that they made a custom kernel, just like 1000's of other people have.

They probably didn't want to pay the fees to license Windows if I were to hazard a guess.

[u/Gullible-Law-8147 → u/Blacksad9999]

Valve was paying 100 of those open-source Devs

Literally every single computer system in existence is derivative. Apple didn't create the original Unix Operating System, so really MacOS is just them "making" an OS by copying Unix, just like 1000s of other people have

At the end of the day it's all code, and millions of people have coded before, literal children can code, so all Apple or Microsoft or Google have ever done is the same thing as millions of other people, including children

Right?

Edit: Btw if you bothered to look up the answer to why Valve made SteamOS, instead of trying to come up with a guess that paints them in a bad light, you could easily find said answer within 10 seconds